In Via
Walking with Christ: The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage with Will Peterson
In this week's episode, we talk with Will Peterson from the Modern Catholic Pilgrim about the National Eucharist Pilgrimage. This historic Eucharistic Procession will cross the United States over nine weeks, with four different routes meeting in Indianapolis for a Eucharistic Congress. We talk to Will about the behind-the-scenes intricacies of coordinating this vast endeavor, from the careful orchestration of 65 dioceses to the pivotal roles of the young adult perpetual pilgrims.
Will our country be open to what the Holy Spirit wants to do this summer?
Find out more and how you can participate at https://www.eucharisticpilgrimage.org/
For more about Modern Catholic Pilgrim and resources for local pilgrimage, visit https://www.moderncatholicpilgrim.com/
In this week's episode, we talk with Will Peterson from the Modern Catholic Pilgrim about the National Eucharist Pilgrimage. This historic Eucharistic Procession will cross the United States over nine weeks, with four different routes meeting in Indianapolis for a Eucharistic Congress. We talk to Will about the behind-the-scenes intricacies of coordinating this vast endeavor, from the careful orchestration of 65 dioceses to the pivotal roles of the young adult perpetual pilgrims.
Will our country be open to what the Holy Spirit wants to do this summer?
Find out more and how you can participate at https://www.eucharisticpilgrimage.org/
For more about Modern Catholic Pilgrim and resources for local pilgrimage, visit https://www.moderncatholicpilgrim.com/
Welcome to In Via, the podcast where we're navigating the pilgrimage of life. We are all in via on the way and we are learning a lot as we go. I'm your host, joan Watson. Join me as we listen to stories, discover travel tips and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we'll see that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, rome or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you right there in your car, on your run or in the middle of your workday.
Joan:Welcome back, listeners. You are listening to In Via the podcast, where we are navigating the daily pilgrimage of life, and we were in the midst of a mini series of sorts talking about the history of pilgrimage with Rome and the Holy Land and the Camino, and we're going to take a break to bring you right back into the present moment, the present day. I'm very excited for this episode. We are going to be talking all about the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage that is happening here in the United States, and I'm just so excited to talk about it that I'm going to launch right in and welcome Will Peterson. Will, thanks for joining us today.
Will:Thanks, joan. Always great to be with the Verso community.
Joan:Yeah thank you. So we were chatting about this before we started recording, but I start every episode with if you could only tell people three sentences about yourself as way of introduction, will? What would you say about yourself?
Will:First, I am a child of God, son of Ann and Ted Peterson, brother of Jack Bo and Mike, husband to Katie and father to John. Second, I am a Catholic, a contrarian and a voracious reader. And finally, I will steal from St Paul with my favorite gospel passage, or not gospel, sorry scripture passage. But by the grace of God I am what I am and that grace in me has not been ineffective.
Joan:I love it. I love it. I can tell you. You thought about those. Those are some of the best three sentences I think we've gotten in our intros, and I'm not just saying that, I mean it. So I'd love to talk more about God's grace at work in your life and about what you do for work and what your ministry is. That leads into our topic. So can you tell me a little bit about the Modern Catholic Pilgrim?
Will:topic. So can you tell me a little bit about the Modern Catholic Pilgrim Sure? It's a nonprofit organization that aims to deepen faith and build community across the United States through walked pilgrimage and the Catholic tradition. This idea that walked pilgrimage is such a rich tradition of our faith as you guys you know right, I've been talking about the history of it, but it's maybe not seen as accessible to contemporary US Catholics in a way that it could be and that might be beneficial to them. So we work as an organization to create that accessibility, to promote walked pilgrimage here in our country to allow people to encounter Christ. Pilgrimage here in our country to allow people to encounter Christ. We think of the Emmaus model, so that road to Emmaus gospel passage in Luke's gospel, bringing people to encounter the risen Christ and missioning them back into their communities with their hearts set on fire, as those disciples were.
Joan:I love it. I love that you look well. Number one we just talked in our last episode. We talked about the history of the Camino and when we were talking to our guest, kevin, he talked about how difficult it was to come back to the United States when you can't just kind of escape and walk. And you know, he said you know as much as he would love to go walk on the side of a highway someday and just recollect his thoughts he doesn't have that opportunity. So I love that you are helping that become accessible to us here in the United States. And I love that you focus here in the United States, because I think so often, especially in my own work, when I'm talking about pilgrimage, people immediately go think about Rome or France or the Holy Land, and you help us see that pilgrimage is possible here, right here in the United States.
Will:Yeah, thank you. Exactly, I think that we get hung up on hearing the word pilgrim and you and I were talking before recording about thinking of the Mayflower or the Middle Ages, but no, this is something real. And again I kind of make up the number of the 0.1% of US Catholics I can't imagine it's much more than that who have the capability, the opportunity, to go abroad on pilgrimage. But again, if this is something that, like Christ himself did he was a pilgrim to Jerusalem every year for the Feast of Passover Like, why would we not do what we can to allow all Catholics to pray as Christ prayed, as the early Christians prayed Again to have that encounter with Christ? So it seems to me like it's a great opportunity.
Will:Now I would love to go abroad. I'd love to do the Camino. You know your friend who just came back from the Camino, right, we can struggle in that there's not quite the same walkability here in the United States, which can be frustrating at times. But you know we're fortunate where we are, that there's a lot of great holy sites throughout our country.
Joan:Yeah, and I want to talk about that walkability. That's a huge question I have about this upcoming pilgrimage. But before we talk about the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, can you give us some examples of some other pilgrimages you all have done and what are some opportunities or some things that might be in our backyard that we don't even know about?
Will:Sure. So we were founded on the idea of making multi-day walked pilgrimages for young adults and having them stay with hosts from parishes along the way. So that started actually in all places in Kentucky, going from Lexington and Louisville, kentucky, out to the Abbey Gethsemane where Thomas Merton had been a month and who has some great writings about pilgrimage and has been inspiration to our work. We've done multi-day walk pilgrimages between the missions. In California there's a path called the Wisconsin way between the now national shrine for Our Lady of champion and Holy Hill Basilica outside Milwaukee. We just had a group go from an Augustinian parish in the Bronx down to the national shrine of St Rita of Casha in Philadelphia with the Augustinian parish in the Bronx, down to the National Shrine of St Rita of Cascia in Philadelphia with the Augustinians. A group of young adults went with Augustinian friar for a week. And then we do one day pilgrimages, oftentimes in association with a parish, a diocese, religious order, school, some combination thereof, and then we do stuff like just empowering people to make their own walk.
Will:Pilgrimage for Mary, you know, in her month of May, or we're excited, we're gearing up for the Jubilee year. You know, again, not all of us will be able to go to Rome for the Jubilee. But how can we dive into that great theme of Pilgrims of Hope, you know, in our own community? So creating resources for 2025 for that, yeah, so, and then it's also great in my work here to learn that there are some wonderful pilgrimages that occur year after year. There's the walk to Mary every first Saturday of May to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion. Actually, every Good Friday, over 30,000 people make pilgrimage to the Sanctuario de Chimayo outside of Santa Fe, new Mexico, and that's been happening for decades and people don't know about it, but that's, you know, like the largest one stateside. There's Our Lady, of Czestochowa , Doyles Town, pennsylvania. So there's a lot of stuff that's actually already going on and we want to try to lift that up too, just to help people understand that it's happening.
Joan:Yeah, I love that. I love it. My like, I want to go on pilgrimage and I want to help people go on pilgrimage right here, and so we're going to link you know, modern Catholic Pilgrim, we're going to link your website and everything in the show notes and encourage people like, maybe this is something your parish needs to do, maybe there's something nearby, and I, yeah, I'm really excited. But I also want to find out more about this massive National Eucharistic Pilgrimage that's happening. Want to find out more about this massive National Eucharistic Pilgrimage that's happening. And I have to say I have so many questions and I actually put out on Instagram do you have any questions for Will? Will organize this. What are your questions? And nobody asked any questions and my mind I was like I have so many questions.
Joan:I've organized one pilgrimage, one Eucharistic procession. It involved three different schools and I died. I mean, it was so hard to get everybody on the same page, to get everything organized. That was like a 20-minute Eucharistic procession. I have so many questions for you. You are my hero. I don't know how you've done this, and so let's launch into how does somebody tackle this. What is the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage? First of all, for those listeners who don't know why I'm freaking out, that you've undertaken this crazy, crazy adventure. What is the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage?
Will:Sure A great question and, yeah, the answer to probably most of your questions is just the grace of God. But the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage is an initiative of the National Eucharistic Congress, which is this watershed moment in the midst of what we find ourselves in right now in the US Catholic Church the National Eucharistic Congress, which is this watershed moment in the midst of what we find ourselves in right now in the US Catholic Church the National Eucharistic Revival. So that was launched Corpus Christi June of 2022, by our US Conference of Catholic Bishops with this idea of reviving right devotion to, and understanding of, and deepening relationship with, our Eucharistic Christ. So the Congress is going to be this opportunity, over the course of five days, for people to come together from across the United States to pray together, go to mass, you know, hear wonderful speakers and just talk about the theology of the Eucharist, the spirituality, just our practices, our devotions. And that will be July 17th to July 21st in Indianapolis, indiana. But prior to that, the executive director, tim Glonkowski, of the Congress and the bishop, chair of the work of the revival in the Congress, bishop Andrew Cousins, had come up with this vision that was impacted and informed by these different priests who talked to the bishop, the Knights of Columbus, all these. I can't take credit for the vision, but they had this vision for four cross-country pilgrimages to come from the east, west, north and south and conclude at the Congress in July. And so, just again, work of the Holy Spirit, our organization, modern Catholic Pilgrim, got in contact with Tim and Bishop Cousins and they asked us in July of 2022 to put together a proposal for what it might look like to have these routes occur and reach Indianapolis. So we put together the proposal. It was accepted. So again, one of the answers to your question would probably be you know, it takes time, so it's going to take us about two years to prepare for this.
Will:But essentially, the National Eucharistic of Pilgrimage. One route, the Marian route, will start the headwaters of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota and come down from there to Indianapolis. The St Elizabeth Ann Seton route, out of the east will start the tomb of Blessed Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus, just outside New York City. The St Juan Diego route will start in Brownsville, texas, at the cathedral there at the border, go up the Gulf Coast before heading north to Indianapolis. And the St Juniperro Serra route will start in San Francisco at the cathedral. There they get to process across the Golden Gate Bridge on day one and then just go due east really to reach Indianapolis. All four routes will start on Pentecost Sunday. They will have a support vehicle with them. It's a core group of young adults.
Will:The idea was always how can we engage young people in the Congress and the revival? So, having a core group of young adults who will be essentially stewards of our Eucharistic Lord, and they'll always have a priest chaplain with them. So each day will be, you know, mass in the morning, typically a Eucharistic procession of up to 15 miles, maybe 20 miles in certain cases. Evening events, praise and worship, holy hours, confessions, testimonies, meals, and then again they do have a support vehicle. So it'd be tough to do a Eucharistic procession and reach Indianapolis in two months from San Francisco. So they'll drive certain stretches of it as well. But we're just thrilled and we invite the public to all. You know, basically all of the above Most days is all just how can you come and participate in some small way, even if you can't take two months and walk across the country to attend the Congress?
Joan:Do you know why? You know Bishop Cousins and the organizers thought to have pilgrimage as part of this. Do you know why pilgrimage? You know because you can have a big conference and we've had lots of conferences and I'm very excited for the Eucharistic Congress and we've done a lot in our parishes and in the diocese for the revival. Do you know why pilgrimage was, was why this came, idea came.
Will:I know that there was a desire from some of the priests who first brought it to Bishop Cousins, for, you know, something big to commemorate, because this is our first nationally Eucharistic Congress in, I think, 83 years. The last one was 1941 in St Paul, Minnesota. So I think, something to recognize that and also this opportunity to say not everyone's going to be able to attend the Congress, but we want people to have that touch point with it. And this is a great opportunity for witness and there's a great sense of that sanctification of the land which I think is something I'm sure that we can speak to ourselves in our work in pilgrimage, of that great gift of yes, you oftentimes start at a holy site right and go to another holy site, but it's not like all the space in between is abyss. God is present, and when we're on pilgrimage we become so much more aware of that, and when we're on pilgrimage with our Lord and a monstrance, even more so. So I know that there is a deep desire to really sanctify our country in that way as well.
Joan:That's beautiful. You kind of began to talk us through logistically how it's going to take place, because I did wonder how are we going to get from San Francisco to Indianapolis in that short time? That's a long distance, and we're talking about Rocky Mountains Indianapolis in that short time? That's a long distance and we're talking about Rocky Mountains, so it makes sense that they're not walking the whole way. But logistically, how is the Eucharist like? Are we talking him being possessed in a monstrance? Is there a tabernacle? Can you talk a little bit more about, like if I was to stumble upon this, what I would see? Or, you know, if I was to walk it with the group, and can I walk it with all the, with all?
Will:you know with it and all that. Yeah, thank you. Well, before I dive in, I do want to make sure I give the appropriate thanks, again Bishop Cousins in a special way for endorsing this work. And then we have our route coordinators, rhea Benes and Chanel Shaw, who are on our team overseeing, and one wonderful thing that Bishop Cousins did was he sent a letter to the ordinary of each diocese through which we were likely to be walking. Ultimately, we're going through 65 dioceses, which is more than a third of the ones in the United States, but he asked for their approval and then said could you appoint a diocesan representative specifically for this pilgrimage? And so that has been a game changer. So then we now have a team of 65, who oftentimes have their own teams in each diocese, so we major things couldn't do it without them and Marie and Chanel.
Joan:That was another question I had, because I've worked in a diocese and it's hard enough to get priests to work together. I couldn't imagine getting 65 bishops and priests and parishes. So that is a huge, that's a huge advantage, because that alone, I think, would give me a headache.
Will:So I'm sure it's still a headache. Honestly, it's a great example of subsidiarity in the church, this pilgrimage, I think, because we went very much so to a local level and said here's our general idea. You know, mass procession, evening events, how's that look in your diocese? And it's been cool to have response of like, well, we'd like to do it this way, or we want to incorporate this community or that. You know so. And we said, great, and that's a chance for the local diocese to have responsibility and ownership for us. So in a lot of ways, we kind of just like hold the string that gets from, you know, the beginning point to Indianapolis along the four routes and just make sure that the string as it gets all knotted and everything remains the same string.
Joan:But what a beautiful testament to the church and that the Catholic church is unified in this way but diverse, right that this universal church and has many gifts, and many people are going to be playing a part in their own way. It's going to be such a beautiful testament to the American Catholic Church. That's beautiful.
Will:God willing. Thank you, yes, you touch on it. You say it better than I can when we say one of our goals was engaging the local and universal church. But to really hammer home on it, for what we had to do was, first off, identify the starting points, and it was above my pay grade for determining it. I know there are people who say we wish it had started here or there. I was not the one making those decisions, but there was that sense of coming across the country and then recognizing a start date and knowing that we'd be asking to young people to commit a substantial amount of time to this, we said, well, it's probably college students or those in school, and so let's. And it was also just like well, it's an early Easter this year, so we can start Pentecost Sunday, may 19th, and that allows us to seek out college students who have their summers, you know, more or less free. So great, we had our starting date. And then we said, all right, and how can we break it up week by week and find ourselves in different cities along the route, you know, over the weekends and such, and then kind of, how do you fill in from there? So we broke it down into that again.
Will:A typical week we're in a city on a Sunday and we go to the local cathedral for mass. We're then part of a Eucharistic procession that's maybe more akin to like a Corpus Christi procession that Sunday, where you might have streets shut down, inviting the whole diocese and neighboring dioceses to come in and take part. You know, do a short procession there, conclude and then the pilgrims go into their week where, again, like monday morning, you've got mass at a local parish and then we do oftentimes like a we call it a major procession for a mile. So that's canopy, processional cross, torches, uh, you know, thurible, all kind of everything. And then we do benediction at a mobile altar or back at the parish of the loop, but just something where we come together, we pray and that's a nice way again to make this accessible. Someone who can go to an eight o'clock mass and then still get to work by nine, you know who can take part and say I did, you know a portion of the Eucharistic pilgrimage. And then we transition to minor procession where we maybe just processional cross a single umbralino over the monstrance, but the idea is, priest with monstrance as we're walking again, and that might be up to 10, 15 miles.
Will:We did a pilot pilgrimage actually in the diocese of Fort Wayne, south Bend, in June of last year where we did eight days, 110 miles and all 110 miles. We had Christ exposed in the monstrance as we walked, and so we know it can be done. You get to the next parish right Again evening, have a potluck. I do think this is the only pilgrimage of its scale that the pilgrims will likely gain weight, just based on what we saw in Indiana in June and what we're hearing from our different diocesan representatives who are like we don't want the Sarah out of the West to be thinking they've got the best food, the fresh seafood. In San Francisco In New York we got the pasta, we're doing crawfish. It's so good, I'm so excited for that.
Will:Meals, evening events. Like I said, there'll be some portions to drive, to knock down a few miles, get to the next stop, but and then we get to our next major city stop for the coming weekend, saturday, they're going to do a service project, uh, and you know, to make explicit that connection between our eucharistic lord and the um, you know the poor and vulnerable, and then oftentimes we try to give them saturday afternoon evening off the pilgrims and their chaplains to just kind of unwind, and then that next Sunday you kick back into what I just described for a week. So we'll do that, for about it's like nine weeks on the four routes.
Joan:That's beautiful. So if I, if I know that the procession is coming through, that the procession is going to be coming through my city, am I welcome to join, kind of that, even that 10 mile um stretch, if I can, is that is the invitation open.
Will:Yeah, so we, uh, we're blessed. Now there's a website, eucharisticpilgrimageorg that hasa cool interactive map that shows you where we're stopping along the four routes and so you can even say, like, oh, on June 21st they're going to be, you know, at this parish in, like Steubenville, ohio, you know, and this is what they're doing, and we have all the public events that are open to any to participate available for registration now. So there are certain times where that 10 miles is not open to the public, just for road safety and that type of stuff. But we've really tried to work with dioceses and they've done a great job of identifying walking trails and, good, you know, bike path, walking paths and the such where, yes, as many people as possible, hopefully, can come out and join us for a full day at 10, 15 miles of doing procession. And, again, if you can only do a mile or two or just a block with us, you know, feel free. But yes, so it's available now People can register for a diocese to participate in, you know, the public events of that diocese.
Joan:That's really exciting. What did you learn? Did you learn anything from kind of the trial pilgrimage, because I could imagine it was important to do it once and make sure it could work? What are some of the things you learned from that little mini pilgrimage?
Will:Well, the big thing was learning that it can be done. We weren't quite sure when we started this and actually the credit goes to our advisory board for the pilgrimage who, early on, said before you try to do this massive thing in 2024, you should probably try doing it at a slightly smaller scale. We were blessed to have the support of Bishop Kevin Rhodes there in the Diocese of Fort Wayne, south Bend. Gosh, I mean, we learned so much. We learned that you need to be adaptable, gosh, I mean you know we learned so much we learned that you need to be adaptable that we actually one of the great gifts was learning that this truly is like a grassroots experience where the parishes were just so thrilled, you know, to be there and to demonstrate the richness of the parish life and it didn't feel like a top-down thing, you know, and just the welcome that we received again, the food that we received, the people showing up, like people are just going to show up. You know it's great to have the registration. You know it's important to have, but we saw people, just like people would Facebook Live when we were walking. Their friends would see it and they'd know the cross streets and they'd come and join us and so the group would increase and we saw great gifts of the priests and deacons who were able to join us and actually process with the monstrance we had. Basically every day we had a chaplain with us for those full eight days, but then we also had priests and deacons who just came for again a half day or full day and the gifts they received from it, and and again the young adults. So we had a core group of young adults who are our perpetual pilgrims for just those eight days, and to hear their testimonies afterwards just gets me so excited for what it's going to mean for the 24, six on each route, plus seminarians who will be walking for two months with our Eucharistic Lord.
Will:So, yeah, learned a lot there. And just to coordinate, as you mentioned, joan, in coordinating with those different schools for your procession, making abundantly clear do you have volunteers to carry the canopy? You know who's doing what, making sure we have the contact information, it's all there. And then, yeah, we're doing a lot to train our pilgrims to be adaptable. Hey, this parish said that they had four volunteers to carry the canopy, but they've all got, you know the flu. You step in or you find you know like. So just making sure that and and trusting in the grace of God. But that that was very important. Yeah, a lot of great lessons from that.
Joan:What a gift for these 20, these 24 young people. How did they did they apply to, to be these perpetual pilgrims? This is, this is going to be a summer to remember for them.
Will:Yeah, yeah, certainly will be. Hopefully that you know they're they're very thankful, hopefully at the end that they I know the blisters might impact their decisions, but we so. So, yes, we had an application that we went live with back in the fall of 2023 and just advertised it into young adult communities. You know newman centers just you know the rent ran the gambit and gave a couple months for people to apply and we received over 100 applications and it it was not an insubstantial application process. So from those over 100, we went to interview about 40. And then another, and then we did a second round of interviews, cutting that down a little bit and ultimately, out of that process, selected the 24. So they really had to run the gambit to give of themselves.
Will:But they come from across the country, from actually even internationally. They come from different backgrounds. Again, there are a number of students, both undergrad and graduate, but then there's, you know, an engineer, there's people who are already in ministry or just, you know, studying the hard sciences. I was an English major in college. I thought you know something romantic like this would be humanities, people, A lot of great hard sciences, and they're just, they've got such a joy. We did a retreat with them to kick off their formation over President's Day and we got to be in person with them and it was just phenomenal. And we've been doing weekly Zoom since then with different formation topics to prepare them for this, and each Monday night is just a highlight to prepare them for this, and each Monday night is just a highlight. Can't wait for them to get to be with our Lord and to encounter and help facilitate others' encounters with our Lord.
Joan:Yeah, that's beautiful. What do you think is going to be the hardest part of these two months? You?
Will:know, I think well, for those perpetual pilgrims, it'll be making sure that they remain charitable with one another as the miles increase. And, um, you know, just just being open to and recognizing that, even though we've got everything now you can register for on the website, like it's not going to look exactly like that, uh, we'll have weather issues, we'll have, uh, you know, road closures or what you know like different things that will come up, and so, um, staying grounded in that and recognizing where the lord is moving, uh, to call us to. You know, maybe now it's just a time of a holy hour, it's not a time to actually walk. We're just going to stay at this parish while the storm subsides and then drive to the next one. So I think, having to let go a little bit there, um, and then just making sure that we're doing a good job of facilitating public participation across the four routes.
Joan:Yeah, and what do you hope is the fruit of the next two months?
Will:Oh man. So the story that always comes to mind for me is from that pilot pilgrimage we did up in Indiana in June where we were on our second to last day. We had about 100 people walking with us and we had a number of priests and deacons from the diocese. So our chaplain priest was not carrying the monstrous at the time, he was walking toward the back and a young girl must have been seven or eight apparently saw us coming up the road, you know, just out front of her house, and she ran into her house and came back out wearing her first communion dress and she had must just received first communion, you know early, right in April or whatever and she ran out and she took our priest chaplain's hand and walked with us for a couple of hundred yards.
Will:And so like that, that opportunity, like just knowing that that's something that will be happening in that encounter, I just am so thankful for that.
Will:I'm hopeful that these young adults, that their lives are transformed, that they become tremendous leaders, I'm hopeful that that experience of hospitality. So we've asked in the dioceses that the young adults be hosted either in host family homes and parish halls and retreat centers, you know, monasteries what have you, but that biblical hospitality that's such an integral part of pilgrimage as we know, like on the Camino, santiago, and such that that is something that really opens hearts and minds here in the United States. Again, of course, I'm hopeful that a fruit is that people learn through this national pilgrimage about great holy sites here, about holy men and women. I mean, we have saints who are, you know, live their saintly lives in our country and again, aren't all buried in Rome, you know and so understanding that we have these holy men and women to whom we can seek, you know, seek out for intercession, and so again, that this might be something where people become more open to pilgrimage locally and again, that local communities are transformed by these encounters with our risen Christ.
Joan:Yeah, I just the encounter piece I think is so important and you're giving people the opportunity to encounter the Eucharistic Lord as he crosses our country. Thinking of that road to Emmaus imagery that he is like are we ready to walk with him? Are we ready to open our homes up to him? You know, somebody opened their home up to him at the road to Emmaus, right, they left pretty quickly and just that beauty that I'm really struck by, the beauty of a Catholic culture which we don't live in a Catholic country.
Joan:We haven't grown up in a Catholic culture the way people in Italy or France have, even if they're not practicing today. It's still a culture imbued with Catholicism in a way that the American culture is not. But you're bringing this piece of Catholic culture and allowing people to encounter the risen Christ walking down their streets. I can't wait to see what happens to people who have never experiencing anything like this and the questions that are going to be asked in the encounter with Christ. It's going to happen in such a tangible way. It's. I think we have to be ready for this to really transform the United States.
Will:Yeah, god willing. And again, I think you touch on it and you all know the wonderful work that you're doing and we know that there's a great gift to geographic pilgrimage. You mentioned the concrete. You know to actually, you know, take those physical steps. You know we're on the spiritual journey, which is great but better understood when we've actually gotten out and walked. So, yes, we're thrilled to give people that opportunity. I go back. You know I mentioned Thomas Merton earlier. He has a great line in an essay he wrote about pilgrimage where he says the geographic pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of the inner journey. You can have the one without the other, but it's best to have both. And so.
Will:I know you I'm sure have seen the fruits of it yourself, just with the wonderful work that Verso does. But giving people the opportunity to truly make geographic pilgrimage, I think that yeah, we'll see great leaps and bounds on that spiritual journey as well.
Joan:Yeah, yeah, well, thank you for all your work, thank you for everything you all are doing to make this a success. I know I encourage our listeners to pray for the success of this. You know this doesn't happen without your hard work and it also doesn't happen without our listeners' prayers. Like you said, so much of it's happening because of the grace of God, and so I think to have the courage to pray for the Holy Spirit to really come down upon our country during this time, not to take that this opportunity for granted, but to ask a great anointing upon our country during this time of revival, but especially in these next two months, from Pentecost, you know, to the Eucharistic Congress, is such an opportunity for our country. So I'm asking our listeners to pray for that, to pray for the heroic pilgrims that are going to be walking. And could you tell us one more time, if a listener wants to participate, where they find that information?
Will:Yeah, sure, yeah, thank you. And again, participation can be in a broad way. As you say, prayer. You know, walking with us walk on your own. So EucharisticPilgrimageorg is the website. It has an interactive map. It also has resources for those who don't. You know, maybe don't live near a route to make your own self-led Eucharistic pilgrimage Right. Thinking about again, our organization is all about helping people understand gosh. My own parish church can be a site of pilgrimage. You know how could I walk there and spend some time in adoration or walk there and conclude with the mass. You know, make it a very Eucharistic pilgrimage experience and do that in solidarity with the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and you know my brothers and sisters in Christ. So there are resources there for people and for families to do that as well. But that's on EucharisticPilgrimageorg.
Joan:I love it. Well, thank you Will. Thanks for joining us today, thanks for sharing all of this, and, listeners, be sure to keep it in your prayers, but join, if you can, in any way that you can join this beautiful effort. So thanks again, will.
Will:Thanks, joan, appreciate it.
Joan:Okay, god bless. Listeners, stay tuned. We are continuing to talk about pilgrimage, the history of pilgrimage, but I think it's so beautiful today to really look at pilgrimage not just as something in history, but something happening today in our own country, and so really, I encourage you to find out more about this Eucharistic pilgrimage and join it however you can. So, god bless.